Among the worst offenses against the rule of law in the past hundred years are the various special privileges granted to unions. The Norris-Laguardia and Wagner-Taft-Hartley Acts put unions in a position to impose their will on companies by force, to "close" a shop to all but union labor, and worst of all, to engage in violence for economic gain. No conceivable rationale could be offered for these things that would square with fundamental principles of justice. The Right-To-Work movements of the past couple of decades have done considerable good in reversing the pernicious effects of coercive, violent unionism, but much remains to be done.
There's no mystery why unionized industries have been losing jobs, while non-unionized ones have been gaining. Except for the government sector, this is uniformly true; even the heaviest manufacturing industries are learning to do with fewer and fewer human hands -- because it's the path of survival.
There is a great irony in the unflagging support of the Left for coercive unionism. Given the current state of American labor law, a union is a private army backed by political mechanisms. What other description would apply to an organization that has the privilege of compelling you to join or leave your employer, and enforcing its will by violence, for which it and its members are immunized from prosecution? Yet substitute the word "militia" for "union," and the Left would be, pardon the phrase, up in arms in righteous condemnation. But in our society, unions are single-stop shopping centers for large masses of votes and monetary support to political campaigns -- and the Left cannot wean itself from them.
Violence for economic gain. Forced collectivization. A status above the law. Josef Stalin would approve.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
MARK A SITY